An adaptation of a sexy best-selling fantasy book series, with a rabid built-in audience and vast potential for elaborately costumed melodrama, that has become the feather in the cap for its network. Are we talking about Outlander or Game of Thrones? Both, actually, and with Outlander debuting for a second season, just a few weeks ahead of Game of Thrones’ Season 6 premiere, the similarities between the shows are already growing. Is Outlander gunning for the fantasy-TV crown that Thrones has held for so long?

Outlander Season 2 is different from the first for many reasons that have nothing to do with the TV competition—this is, after all, a season of television that sticks closely to a Diana Gabaldon book published more than 23 years ago (and some very real history that dates much further back). But Starz has made the connection between the two shows clear with a little tongue-in-cheek marketing, using taglines like “Forget winter, spring is coming” and “Let the games begin.” And Gabaldon herself took a gentle jab at Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. After Martin missed his deadline for the sixth installment in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, Gabaldon said she wasn’t worried about the Starz show outpacing her novels. “Unlike George, I write no matter where I am or whatever I’m doing,” Gabaldon told Variety.

But even if Team Outlander made no mention of it, there’s no ignoring that the second season of the show is literally a game of thrones. Leaving the muddy fields of Scotland for the gleaming floors of Versailles, Claire and Jamie Fraser get caught up in the Jacobite rebellion—a historical struggle for the British crown. Though the Frasers speak perfect French and Claire, at least, looks stunning in lush Parisian fashions, the second season does have some of the inevitable clash of cultures that made for such dramatic fodder when the rough-around-the-edges Starks came to King’s Landing in the first season of Game of Thrones. And all of the refined nastiness we’ve come to love in the Lannisters, Tyrells, et al., are clearly reflected in the gossip and depravity of King Louis XV’s court.

Outlander star Sam Heughanexplained, “The danger in Paris and Versailles is less physical with swords and weaponry; it’s more politics and backstabbing and poison. It’s more hidden. There’s a lot more politics at work and a lot more danger.” Poisoned wine goblets, shifting alliances, scenes set in brothels, plunging fashions, and dissipated and capricious royals. Sound familiar? Outlander also added a pair of much younger cast members this season: 21-year-old Rosie Day, playing much younger as the innocent child bride Mary Hawkins, and 14-year-old Romann Berrux as a scrappy pickpocket named Fergus who is adopted by the Frasers. If you miss the younger Stark children, Mary and Fergus could help fill that void; Mary has a particularly gruesome plot that is very Sansa-esque.

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Outlander is still yards ahead of early seasons of Game of Thrones when it comes to female empowerment, which they’ll continue to prove with the introduction of new female characters like Frances de la Tour’s no-nonsense Mother Hildegarde, who could conjure the wry delivery of Diana Rigg’s Lady Olenna Tyrell. There’s also an even stronger magical bent to the show’s second season—yes more magical than time travel. There are no ice zombies or dragons, but there is possibly a little witchcraft in store.

And Outlander seems to have directly learned from the many O.M.G. endings of Game of Thrones; in the first few episodes of Season 2 alone, presumed-dead characters come back to life (ahem) and narrative twists come crashing down right before the credits roll. Audiences who found the pacing of *Outlander’*s first season a little slow may appreciate its move toward the propulsive narrative of shows like Game of Thrones.

Outlander still has growing to do before matching the epic sprawl and scope of Game of Thrones, but for now, at least, it’s wisely anchored in the sizzling interplay between Heughan and Caitriona Balfe. Some Game of Thrones viewers struggle to define who the lead character in that series is, but with Outlander (at least for now) there is no doubt. And Thrones, with its infectious catchphrases and zippy one-liners and meme-able moments, is a rare fantasy story that seems tailor-made for the digital generation. Outlander, despite picking up its pace in Season 2, will always be a slower burn.

Yes, many of these similarities are just necessary elements of any costume drama or fantasy series. And the re-invention of Outlander in its second season, thanks to Gabaldon’s books, was going to happen no matter what. “I don’t want to spoil it for you,” show-runner Ronald D. MooretoldVanity Fair last year, “but the books are going to leave France, and then they’re going to go to Jamaica, and then they’re going to go to the New World. It’s a journey, man. It’s a big old yarn that we’re telling here.” Of the second season, he said, “It’s like we’ve been creating a new show.” But if that show just happens to look a lot more like the very popular one over on HBO, well, we’re sure Starz won’t mind fantasy-hungry audiences adding a second show to their rosters.

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